Trailblazing 58-year-old who traded hedonism for racing across mountains

Louise Goddard is not so much a breath of fresh air as a howling gale tearing down the Lancaster fells to rage through your stereotypes. Her many guises have included mum, model and champion ultra-runner, with checkpoints on the French Riviera and “Madchester” party scenes as well as the Pennine Way. She has suffered hypothermia, broken fingers and a fractured skull. For a while she was homeless. Determinedly not the norm, the 58-year-old says: “I want to be an anti-influencer.”

Unless you are familiar with the widening world of ultra-running, you may not know of Goddard, but she is probably one of Britain’s most remarkable unsung heroes. Accolades include holding the women’s record for both the 46-mile Winter and Summer Spine Sprint races in the Pennines, and being second in her age group at the Duathlon World Championships. With make-up and painted nails, she does not fit the rugged ultra-runner template, but she regularly beats elite men.

She tells me that some male fell runners call it being “chicked” when losing to Goddard and British contemporaries such as Jasmin Paris, the first woman to complete the famed Barkley Marathons in the United States, and Anna Troup, the outright winner of last year’s 268-mile Montane Summer Spine Race. Her friend Nicky Spinks is a doyen of 24-hour races. A British band of middle-aged women is now blazing a trail through some of sport’s toughest terrain.

As she clutches a blanket at home, after a morning run in cold to gnaw the bones, Goddard’s explanation is typically colourful. “I realised that actually I’m in the latter part of my life now, and I want to leave it going, ‘F***, what a ride!’ Scream to the grave!”

This year’s calendar includes the 215-mile Race Across Scotland and many of these mammoth treks take place over numerous days, with challenges including sub-zero temperatures, sleep-deprivation and, at this year’s Winter Spine, even death threats for a British woman fundraising for Afghan girls and women.

With two children, two dogs and two jobs — for Red Rose Recovery, the addiction and mental health charity, and as a wellness coach — Goddard clearly does not waste time. She has no support team or sponsor, but trains for 20 hours a week. When we meet, she has just beaten snow and storm to win the Winter Spine Sprint in 11hr 53min. “I’ve got to an age where I know I have value and deserve to do what makes me happy,” she says. “There’s a lot of influencers and you see them with all the kit, running with the selfie stick, looking beautifully clean, but I’d rather be a bad influence. I don’t want everybody to be like everybody else. I want you to be you. If you gave as much to yourself as you do to other people then, God, how much better would your life be?”

Where many runners of all distances visualise glory and medals, Goddard rarely hangs around for prizes and plaudits — but she will be there at the finish for others, especially women. “There are people who’ve come from around the world, they don’t know anybody, they’re hallucinating and they have nothing to do. I’ll just give people a hug because I know what it’s like to not have someone who’s proud of you, or to not see you, the person who’s not the athlete.

“You’ve done well, shown great resilience and had a great training plan, but inside there is usually something a bit fragile too. My friend used to tell me I couldn’t date people who did 5ks because the ultra-runners have bigger issues and hence the longer distance.”

This pursuit comes with the danger of being isolated on a mountain in pitch darkness with only a head torch and a fading battery. “What’s to be scared of in the dark?” Goddard says, nursing a coffee. “There aren’t ghouls. The darker things are maybe in your head. I used to hate it but that’s probably because I didn’t want to be alone with my thoughts.”

There had been a lot to think about. Goddard was educated at a Catholic convent school in Burnley, and was treading a well-travelled path to university and a sensible career when she did an early-morning flit from her shared house to live with the wrong boyfriend. “I could not pay my rent and commandeered the local milkman to help with all my bags. The trouble was the landlord turned up and my escape was hampered by the milkman stopping to make his deliveries. Anyway, that’s when I went off into the world of partying.”

She was there when The Haçienda raved in 1990s Manchester but it was not enough and she quit her job as a graphic designer to seek new adventures. “I sold everything and bought an old wedding car — a limousine, walnut dash, blue leather seats — and thought, ‘Right, I’m going to drive to the south of France’. The money ran out by the time I hit Saint-Tropez but I got a job as a chambermaid in the big posh hotels. I used to close the door, raid the minibar and throw myself on the bed with the TV on. Then, when I came home, I became a bit of a face in the London clubs because everybody else had the rave gear and I’d go to vintage shops and have a Christian Dior gown and a turban.” A skinhead running her own clothes stall at Portobello Road Market, she was spotted by those looking for distinctive features, which is how she ended up being photographed by Rankin and appearing in East 17 videos.

However, that high-speed lifestyle took its toll and she became seriously ill with pneumonia. Ultimately, she lost her job and car, and had to live on friends’ sofas. Older and wiser, the proud mum thinks the years of hedonism were part of finding a better route. “I think I was chasing dopamine hits, but when you’re out there on a mountain you get a respect for time. It slows you down. Finally, you’re waking up and smelling the coffee.”

She had already done marathons when a friend said he was putting on a 50-mile race in Windermere. Having won that event, she started going longer and higher, realising that she was driven to finish a task rather than attracted by the spoils that came with it. “I don’t want a T-shirt or medal. The reward is completion.”

That older women should be excelling in ultra-running may surprise some, but studies suggest the gap between the sexes reduces with distance due to physiology and metabolism, while age brings the alchemy of life experience coalescing into the requisite resilience. “With my first child I was in labour for 24 hours, and my body was doing things I had no control over,” Goddard says. “So out there I’m running for 24 hours but I’m controlling the level of discomfort. I’ve got things to ease the level of pain, and I’ve got the mental strength to know this will end. I think women, especially women who’ve had children, are used to multi-tasking, de-risking and anticipating. We’ve got transferable skills.”

Indeed, Goddard explains how a friend told her that all his wife’s friends now want to be ultra-runners. “Cycling was the new golf. Then it was triathlon. Now it’s us.”

When she fell in a cycling race in Cheshire, her first thought was to get home to take her kids to school the next day. “I couldn’t stay in hospital. My head swelled up and I had a fractured skull, but I needed to drop them off.” She got a lift home, applied make-up to make herself look less frightening for the kids and checked into hospital after the school run. She has fallen and broken “nearly all my fingers” during a 108-mile mountain race, and was forced to retire from last year’s Summer Spine with hypothermia. “It was torrential rain for 36 hours and I made the mistake of not stopping,” she says with a shrug.

The loneliness of the long-distance runner struck home during another race in Yorkshire. Her head torch failed and, with her last bit of phone battery, she rang a friend and said, “I’m done, I’m having a breakdown here, it’s torture”. Then she found a gravel path and knew from training runs that it led to a village. She felt her way home. “There was hope and then light,” she says.

None of this is said as boast or bravado, and it is not about beating men. The fact women are excelling in ultra-running goes far deeper than hackneyed comparisons between men’s and women’s football, or crass Battle of the Sexes tennis matches involving a player, Nick Kyrgios, who had previously admitted to assaulting an ex-girlfriend. It’s about being your best.

Sometimes a train of men will follow Goddard because they know she is the first or second lady. “I’m taking the pace, doing the navigation and they’ll try to pass me towards the end. I’ll shout, ‘Cock!’ but I don’t think they do it on purpose. I think it’s ingrained that men are stronger and faster and ‘we should be beating her’, but I think there is now a growing appreciation that the first ladies are different beasts.”

She lauds Paris, famed for winning the Winter Spine in 2019 while breastfeeding, but thinks she should be judged as fantastic for her achievements, not for “whapping her tits out”. “It’s not about gender, it’s about the individual,” she says. “We’ve all got the same value on the start line, the same equipment, the same elements.”

I think of Goddard telling me she can sleep while resting on her poles, alarm set, and suggest this stuff is too tough for the masses? “You choose your hard, though,” she says, and then she nails the appeal. “Devices are off, there’s just the wind, and all you’ve got with you is what you need to eat, drink and wear to survive. And that’s when you realise how little you need in the world. And when you see the view, God, the world just opens up.”

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